


the rosyfingered moon (and you and i)

by ariya167



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, Post-Episode: s03e14-15 The Boiling Rock, mai and ty lee love each other and that's on that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 00:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22006618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariya167/pseuds/ariya167
Summary: They don’t talk.What is there to talk about? Together in this cell, Mai thinks, too many words would fill the air until they choked.
Relationships: Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 336





	the rosyfingered moon (and you and i)

They don’t talk.

What is there to talk about? Together in this cell, Mai thinks, too many words would fill the air until they choked. 

No, it’s better this way. Mai sitting against the stone wall, her back rigid, Ty Lee curled into herself on the bed. She could be asleep, her face turned away, except for the unsteadiness of her breathing, the subtle shaking of her shoulders. What could Mai say to her, to make things better? At least they are alive, she could say. Their very existence is now treasonous, but at least they are alive. Somehow, she doesn’t think that would help. 

At least they are together, she would never say. Not ever, not even when she remembers Ty Lee knocking Azula to the ground, her face shocked like she never believed she could do it. Not even when she remembers Ty Lee’s arms around her, begging her to run, when all Mai could do was clutch onto her like safe harbour in a storm, the waves falling over her head and dragging her under. 

But Mai’s not stupid. In the Fire Nation she wore her silence like a cloak, like armour. And with Azula, she was the same, always deflecting, always hiding. And she knows there isn’t anything she can say that won’t come back to her in the worst way. Retribution from the universe. 

Instead, Mai watches, her face impassive even as her heartbeat shakes and thuds in her chest. She is a statue, she is stone. She is a hollow shell, cracking slowly but surely until she shatters into a thousand pieces. 

  
  
  
  
  


The cell’s only window leads to the prison interior, so there is no way for Mai to tell the time. Still, she tries, counting seconds and minutes in her head until the words lose all meaning. 

Ty Lee’s actually asleep now, her breathing slow and deep. Mai watches the rise and fall of her chest, and envies that peace. Her dreams, she thinks, would be filled with lightning and sharp silver blades. But how does she know that Ty Lee doesn't see those things, if her body does not betray her?

Mai’s body had betrayed her, she thinks. After Azula, when Ty Lee had taken her by the hand. Her mask had cracked, her mouth agape and her limbs immobile until it was far too late. The shame of that stings, but she knows it’s useless to imagine a different future. They could never have escaped the Boiling Rock, let alone Azula. To pretend otherwise is foolishness.

Ty Lee rolls over in her sleep, braid flopping over her shoulder. Mai looks at her, the gentle curve of her jaw, the way her eyelashes brush her full cheeks, and something unnamed rises unbidden in her throat. 

She remembers when they first met, if you could call it that. They’d been so young, so damn young. And Mai had been young, but she’d known what the world was, what it could do to her if she wasn’t careful. Back then, she had thought Ty Lee impossibly cheerful, impossibly naive. Looking back, she wonders if Ty Lee hadn’t known too. If she hadn’t wrapped herself in pink and sparkles and smiles to protect herself, just like Mai hid herself in silence. 

And then, at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, for a little while, it had just been the two of them. Mai was cold and sharp, Ty Lee warm and soft, and yet they fit together like puzzle pieces. Mai had wondered once if Ty Lee had befriended her just to stand out, be different from all her happy normal sisters. Somehow she doesn’t think so. 

“Mai?” Ty Lee asks, her voice soft with sleep. Mai blinks, shaken from her thoughts.

“Ty Lee,” she says, the words barely more than a whisper, and yet they seem to echo off the metal walls of the cell. Despite herself, a shiver runs up her spine. 

Ty Lee sits up, swinging herself over the bed and onto the floor, still so graceful. Her braid shifts behind her shoulder, and Mai watches it fall. 

She can’t get them out, the words she wants to say. Usually she has trouble holding them in, though she’s had enough practice at keeping her mouth shut. This is something wholly different. 

Mai settles on one word. “Why?”

Ty Lee looks at her with those big gray eyes, so wide Mai sometimes feels like she could drown in them, just sink into the colour and never come back up. “Why what?”

_ Why’d you do it. Why’d you save me. Why did you think I was worth saving.  _

Mai doesn’t say that. She shrugs. “You know what.”

Ty Lee breathes slow. “You’re my friend.”

“Azula-”

“You’re my friend,” Ty Lee repeats, insistent. “You’re my friend, and Azula wanted to hurt you. She was going to hurt you, and I could’ve stopped it. I could never have lived with myself if I didn’t.” 

Ah, Mai thinks, with a painful sense of vindication. Of course. Settling her conscience. Doing the right thing. Ty Lee with her safe, careful world, of course she wouldn’t want anything to upset it. 

(She’s being irrational, she’s being petty and cruel, and she very nearly hates herself for it.)

“I see,” Mai says carefully, though she really doesn’t. She’s stuck on that word. Friend. Azula was their friend, except she wasn’t, not really. It's been a long time coming, she thinks. But Mai is Ty Lee’s friend, she always has been, even if she wants-

She wants-

She wants something else. 

Ty Lee is still watching her carefully, the corner of her lip under her teeth. Mai forces herself to focus on that, instead of what exactly something else means. She’s not stupid-she knows what it is, knows it like her own body, like the sharp knives she hid in her sleeves-but it’s too dangerous, even here. She’s hiding, just like always. 

“Mai,” Ty Lee says again. Her hands are moving, fingers tapping against her thighs. She’s never been cooped up like this before, Mai knows, and it doesn’t look like she’s taking too well to it. “I’m-it’s not-” 

Ty Lee takes a breath, her big gray eyes looking up at the ceiling and glimmering in the low light. When she looks back at Mai, there’s a steely set to her gaze that wasn’t there before. Or if it was, she’d hidden it too well for anyone to ever see. 

“I didn’t save you just because it was the right thing to do,” she says. “It was, but that’s not the point. I could’ve . . . I could’ve done what I did to Azula a thousand other times before, but I didn’t.

“I was afraid,” Ty Lee continues, and that Mai understands. “I’ve always been afraid. I didn’t save you because it was the right thing to do. I saved you because it was you.” 

The words hit Mai harder than she’d expected. Tears well in her eyes-just for a second, before she pushes them down, but they’re there. Her heart is thudding in her chest, and her hands are clenching around nothing, and the only thing she can see is Ty Lee. 

Kind, cheerful Ty Lee. Beautiful Ty Lee. Ty Lee who was afraid, but saved Mai because it was  _ Mai _ . 

For the first time in a very long time, or maybe even just the first time at all, Mai admits what she wants to herself. She wants Ty Lee in her arms, on her lips. She wants Ty Lee, the way all the girls back home would want the boys they mooned over, the way Ty Lee pretended to want when she flirted. The way Mai thought she would never want the way she was supposed to want, until that day she saw Ty Lee and that magnificent light in her big gray eyes. 

“Mai?” Ty Lee asks, concerned. The space between them is suddenly hardly any space at all, and Mai finds herself leaning forward. “I thought-”

Mai shakes her head. “No,” she says, and feels her lips crack into a smile. It’s gone a moment later, but it was there, for the world to see. She hesitates, and says, “Do you remember Ember Island? When all those boys were fawning over you, because you’d giggle or smile or whatever it was you did that made you irresistible to them?”

Ty Lee nods, slowly. She’s confused, Mai can tell, and she plunges forward. 

“And the whole time, I was watching you. Just out of the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t look away from you. And it wasn’t-I wasn’t jealous of you, getting all those boys. I didn’t care about that.”

Mai takes a deep breath. Here’s her chance-back out now and play it safe, make up some crap and spend the rest of her life looking at Ty Lee without ever making it real. Screw that.

“I didn’t want all those boys to look at me like they were looking at you. I wanted you to look at me like that.”

Ty Lee’s face is inscrutable. A litany of meaningless words run through Mai’s head, all  _ now you’ve done it  _ and  _ don’t be stupid  _ and  _ idiot why would she ever feel the same way about you _ . But there’s something soft in those big gray eyes, and before she can even form a coherent thought the palm of Ty Lee’s hand is cupping her cheek, her pink lips brushing against Mai’s. 

  
  
It’s sweeter than she could have ever imagined, and she presses back, hungrily. 

When they break apart, Ty Lee is smiling. A real smile, wide and endless, and Mai feels herself echo it on her own face. 

“I always looked at you too,” Ty Lee says, with all the guilty pleasure of a confession. “And I was never like my sisters-I never felt what they felt, but I pretended to. For so long I was just pretending, because I knew what would happen if I didn’t.”

“Well,” Mai says, because she knows all too well how that fear feels. “We’re already in jail, right? What else can they do to us?”

Ty Lee laughs.“For high treason, no less.”

And Mai laughs too, surprised by the sound. She could kiss Ty Lee a thousand times, she thinks, and still want more, never getting tired of the sensation. 

Evidently Ty Lee feels the same way, leaning forward to kiss her again, fingers tangling in her hair. With anyone else Mai would pull away, make excuses, but what else is new? Ty Lee has never been anyone else, not to her. She’s Ty Lee, and Mai loves her. 


End file.
